


The Art of Losing Hats (and Hearts)

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Feels, M/M, all the feels, sort of a literary sort of feel?, what is plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 05:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15834825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Courfeyrac is rather good at losing things, but he's even better at finding love. A short, introspective sort of fic.





	The Art of Losing Hats (and Hearts)

Courfeyrac has been losing things his whole life. Today, it was one particular item of clothing, left in a very specific spot, in his favorite location on all of Paris. It would shock his family, and even more so the friends he used to have, before he came to Paris, if they heard him call this dusty old cafe a favorite place. His life, before Paris, before meeting Enjolras and Combeferre, had been spent in far more decadent places. All he had known was luxury; rich velvet fabrics, bold fashion, and gilded everything. But in Paris, at university, his new friends had offered logic like a scalpel, scraping away all the gilding of his former life. Only then did he see how his family's wealth was gained oppressing others. Only then did he denounce the participle in his name, swearing that he would be no better than any other man.

But, old habits do have a tendency of clinging around the edges of a new life, and Courfeyrac's existence is no exception. His tendency to misplace things came from years of having maids and servants bustling around the backdrop of his days, placing things back where they belonged, mending tears in silk jackets, and replacing missing buttons. At least he could be gracious about his lost items, he had decided. He would believe the best in people. That a coin missing from his pocket would surely be handed back to him, not taken by a pickpocket, as often was the case. If a mug of beer disappeared from a table, well, then it was a gift to whatever thirsty person now drank it.

However, all that generosity faded when it turned out to be his very fine hat that had gone missing. Fashion is another one of those stubborn bits of his old life that still follows him, a faithful hound trotting at his heels. Staring at the table in the Musain, Courfeyrac curses, running his hands through his hair. “I swear, my hat was right on this very table!”

“My dear friend, you did not enter the Musain with a hat today, so you couldn’t possibly have left it here.” Combeferre replied, still looking down at a map.

“I entered without a hat?” he gasped, appalled at his own lack of style. “How could you have permitted me to do so?”

“Oddly enough, appropriate headwear is not one of Enjolras’s criteria for meeting,” his friend replies, “or else certainly Jehan would never be welcome.” Combeferre gets up, and opens a small cupboard where he’d taken to storing his books. He passes Courfeyrac an old hat, the beaver fur a little faded, but functional. It has a good shape to it, and a dashing blue ribbon wrapped around it. It's a fine hat, offered by a finer friend

Courfeyrac beams, the smile splitting his freckled face. “Why, I am touched! You went out and procured an auxiliary hat for me.”

Combferre tousles Courferyac’s hair (in that way only he can get away with) and then places the hat onto Courfeyrac’s head. “It’s your own hat, you dolt.” But then, Combeferre leans down, and kisses his cheek, softly. So softly one might have imagined it, if it wasn’t for the way Comebferre’s glasses brush against his wild curls. “I did add the ribbon though. Blue suits you.”

He watches the studious man walk away, his stride that precise, focused gait that he’d followed from the day they’d met (well, followed the stride and a little more beside), and could not help but smile with affection. Courfeyrac had been losing things his whole life, and not the least of them was his heart.

He’d lost other things of course, but none as important as a heart; keys and buttons and books. Playing cards and trinkets from lovers, letters he’d planned on sending and never gotten around to. His apartment was a sort of chaotic waystation, where items rested in the space between lost and forgotten.

***

“I cannot seem to find my…” Courfeyrac begins, as he searches the apartment in a state of mussed half-dress, desperately racing against the clock (or rather, the theory of a clock, as they’d pawned his old pocketwatch a week ago) to be on time for a meeting at the Musain. The pawning is a new part of this life, trading old possessions for fresh hopes.

“Your hat is hanging up, near your coat,” Marius Pontmercy calls back, from where he sat, transcribing a document. “I put it there so you wouldn’t forget it.”

Courfeyrac smiles and claps a hand on Marius’s frail shoulder. “Excellent work, dearest roommate!”

Marius does not respond.

“What seems to be the matter Monseuir L’abbe?” he inquires, pulling up the only other chair in the room, and sitting on it backward, resting his chin on his hand. His new friend is so solemn, so quiet, all the time.He hasn't quite figured out if he loves Marius, the way he knows he loves Combeferre, but he knows he cares about them both. That he'll never forget either of them.

“I miss my father,” Marius finally admits, his voice soft like a dream. “Strange, isn’t it? I only knew him from what he left behind, and yet, I cannot help but think my life would be better if I had him here, to ask his advice.”

Courfeyrac is rather glad there was no Napoleon-loving officer sitting in his already cramped apartment, but he did not say so. Instead, he nodded. “I feel that way about my mother sometimes.”

“You never mention her.”

“I suppose not.”

Yes, Courfeyrac was good at losing things, and pretending he did not miss them, once they were gone. Pretending he did not ache to hear the soft lullaby his mother used to sing him, that he did not peek around corners for the scamp of a baby sister he had once had, pretend that every cough from one of his friends did not terrify him, haunt him with memories of a room of doctors and tears that took his mother and his sister from him.

It had been easier to pretend he did not feel those losses, back home, when everything around him was lush and decadent and oblivion-offering. None of his old friends knew grief, except perhaps in passing, the way one might know a stranger who visited a house for a night. Here, among the Friends of the ABC, grief seems to have found a permanent home.

***  
“Why, I’ve forgotten my hat!” Courfeyrac announces, running his hand through his hair in astonishment.

And this time, it was his duty to go and fetch it, his duty alone, because they are headed off to battle, all of them. He can't ask Marius to help him look for it, and he cannot hope Combeferre has stowed an extra one away for him. His friends, and their hearts, are focused on grander things.

They would go, and they would fight for liberty, for France. For all their love, their friendship, their beliefs. They would build their barricade and fire their rifles and wave their flag.

And they just might lose.

But that was all right.

Courfeyrac is good at losing things.

But better at always believing things would come back again.


End file.
